Blue
by rattyjol
Summary: The TARDIS unexpectedly lands in the forest, right in front of Ax, who goes off to inform the Animorphs. Meanwhile, one of the Doctor's companions is captured by the Yeerks. Chaos ensues.


**A/N - So, a new story - a Doctor Who/Animorphs crossover. Let's see how long I stick with it, hm? ^_^ In terms of Animorphs canon, this takes place around book 30-ish? I don't think I'm going to use any details from that area of chronology, so it doesn't really matter.**

**Thought-speak will be written [like this].**

**POV is gonna be sloppy. On the Animorphs side it'll be like a Megamorphs book, switching between characters in first person. On the DW side I'm not sure yet, because I tend to prefer writing TV characters in third person but I don't want it to get confusing. So.**

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**Prologue**

A serene peace had enveloped the entire forest like a blanket, the silence only broken by the quiet sounds of wildlife going about their daily business and the rustling of the breeze through the treetops.

However, in the middle of all this, somewhere deep in the woods, far away from civilization and hiking trails and nearly undisturbed by humanity, the birds fell silent and everything seemed to stop momentarily as a pulsing, grating sound that didn't belong at all in this forest, or indeed, anywhere on Earth, echoed through the trees. A blue box faded in and out of existence between two particularly large trees as if uncertain of whether or not it wanted to remain there before finally becoming solid, falling silent as the flashing light atop the box switched itself off. For several seconds, everything was silent.

But then the birds began singing again, and the woodland creatures returned to their usual business as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

But if there had been someone standing just outside the box at that precise moment, that person might have noticed the flash of blue from between two trees not twenty yards away and the gleam of sunlight off a blade as the sound of galloping hooves faded into the distance until it disappeared altogether into the serenity of the woods.

**Chapter 1 – Jake**

"Jake!"

I set down my pencil, glad to have an excuse to take a break from my Biology worksheet, and got to my feet, opening the door and poking my head out. "Yeah?"

"Phone for you," Tom called from the living room, sounding annoyed. "Cassie." I could hear some TV show blaring in the background. But of course, it wasn't Tom that was annoyed, or Tom that was watching the show. It was the Yeerk in his head.

But I'll get to all that later.

"Okay," I called back, leaning over the banister. "I'll take it up here." Taking a step back, I took the phone from its cradle on the wall and held it up to my ear.

"Hey, Cass," I said casually, but my shoulders were tensed. I tried to relax, telling myself that maybe – just maybe – she had called for some mundane, easy reason, like she'd forgotten the homework assignment or she wanted to know if I could hang out that afternoon. Maybe she really _hadn't_ called because we had yet another emergency situation in our war against parasitic alien slugs. Maybe.

Yeah. And maybe I was a kid who in a matter of hours found himself thrust into the position of leader of a band of guerilla fighters, one of whom was a blue-furred, scorpion-tailed, centaur-like alien with a name so long we'd had to shorten it to two letters.

Oh. Wait.

"Hey," Cassie replied, equally casually, but I knew her well enough to hear the underlying strain in her tone. "You free this afternoon? One of our hawks is well enough to be let go and I thought you might like to come." Cassie's dad ran the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic in their barn, which was basically a refuge for all sorts of wounded wild animals and a great place to acquire new morphs. Of course, I knew she wasn't really inviting me to watch a hawk be released; that was just an excuse in case Tom was still listening on the other line.

"Sure. See you in an hour and a half, maybe? I have some homework I want to finish up."

"Okay. See you then."

"Mmhm." There was a soft _click_ and the line went dead. I hung up and returned to my room with a frown, noting the time. It would take me maybe forty-five minutes to fly to Cassie's in falcon morph, but I decided to figure on an hour for a little leeway time. I didn't want to be late; emergency meetings were never called for no good reason. So I had half an hour, give or take.

Sitting down, I tried to concentrate on my homework, but I was so busy thinking about what we were going to get ourselves into _this_ time that by the time I completed the problem I'd been working on and checked the clock again, it was time to leave. I stood and checked that there wasn't anyone out in the hall about to barge in on me before I shrugged off my outer layer of clothing, dropping it on the floor and kicking the whole pile under the bed. Hey, I'm a teenage guy. It's pretty much in my job description to be a slob.

But underneath my t-shirt and jeans I was wearing another shirt three sizes too small and a pair of skintight bike shorts. Knowing that paranoia could very well end up saving my life, I checked that the coast was clear one last time before I closed my eyes and let the changes begin.

The first thing to change was my size. I had my eyes closed, so I couldn't see the ground rushing up to meet me, but the sense of vertigo combined with the horrible feeling of my spine sucking in on itself to shrink my height from over six feet to less than two feet tall in just a few seconds told me all I needed to know.

My skin began to itch as feather patterns began tracing themselves across my body – including places where the sun don't shine, which let me just say is no picnic – and then suddenly lifted up into real feathers. I felt my tail spring out from my . . . well, behind, accompanied by a little _ploof!_ that might have made me smile if my lips hadn't just hardened and stretched to become a beak. I heard as well as felt my organs shifting and rearranging themselves – I did my best not to imagine what that looked like, eugh – and noticed as my bones lightened, becoming hollow to allow me to fly. The morph was nearly complete, now, and I opened my eyes to find that my vision hadn't yet changed. I turned towards the mirror on the back of the closet door and saw a peregrine falcon peer back at me from the glass – only instead of the fierce glare of a bird of prey, my examination was returned in the form of my own human eyes. It was disconcerting, really. But suddenly my vision sharpened, and my eyes changed to the dark, angry glare of the falcon I now was. Everything was so focused, so clear; it was like I had been half blind all my life and my sight had just been miraculously restored.

With one final piercing sweep around my room, I hopped up onto the windowsill, fluffed my feathers, and jumped.

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**A/N - R&R, please? ^_^ And when you do, could you tell me A) Which Doctor/companion(s) you prefer (New Who, please, I haven't seen much of the classic Doctors) and B) Whether the Doctor should already know about Yeerks/Andalites/etc or not. Thank you! :D**


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